The Day I let go.

It all just stopped.

I stopped looking, checking, wondering what was happening. All the things, all the people and places that lived in my mind with some sort of importance were just… gone.

I think it was David Foster Wallace who said, “You’ll stop worrying what others think about you when you realize how seldom they do.” I’m not sure when I read that, but it stuck with me when I did. It was during a period when I was trying to figure my shit out after diving face first through a plate glass window sending shards deep into the hearts of anyone close to me in any way… metaphorically of course.

You never really get over it or truly forget. That sort of ignorance landed me in more than a few shit holes in my lifetime. It’s always there and it always will be.

It being just about anything and everything that holds your emotions in it’s hands, or what you hold tightly then eventually drop into a shallow grave and bury it wondering if it will grow back and hunt you down.

Time heals all the wounds, or wounds all the heals, whichever way doesn’t make you squirm I suppose. There is validity to both.

One of my best talents is letting shit get to me. Like burn a hole in my gut and not sleep for a few years get to me. I don’t have that natural “let it roll off your back” gene, my feathers have apparently flown way to close to the sun. My coping mechanism for this has always been to self medicate or mask that static with something else just a little bit bigger and louder that it brings me some peace. Bigger and louder usually came in a nice shiny package in the form of a bottle.

My fuck shit stack has gradually increased in size over time, I’m sure yours has too. We all have one. Even the purist of the pure have a decent sized fuck shit sandwich stuffed in the back of their fridge behind all of those condiments and processed cheese product. A culmination of bad decisions, terrible mistakes and other uh oh’s that speckle our lives. Mine needed its own mini fridge after a while. I guess it just became time to put it in the freezer.

I’m not sure of the exact moment or if there even was one. It always felt necessary to deal with it piece by piece or all at once, it just needed to be dealt with. But the weird reality is that all of it in the sum of it’s parts sorta dealt with itself. Some things just fell off, some situations were handled with intent on my part and vice versa. There were moments of panic and creeping anxiety, self doubt and lack of self worth… shit, I have those emotions choosing bell peppers at the grocery store.

The value I put on any given situation past or present defined me to such an unhealthy state that I couldn’t allow myself to just be. Living in the moment held no validity because I simply couldn’t allow it.

So I let it go.

I just fucking let it go. Eyes forward, ears open, deep breath, one step at a time. Sure, I still step on the shards of a broken past, but it doesn’t have to define me and it sure as fuck doesn’t direct where I want to go.

The static fades, the music rises and the colors have meaning again.

---